Where familiarity breeds contempt-the case of IT engineers

At the outset, let me clarify my immense respect for those engineers/other graduates who have helped India's ITES companies become world beater. As someone said, success is not an accident, and the ITES industry success is due to excellent skills in management, control, quality, knowledge management etc. While these functions are often siloed, the professionals working in those companies, if having done the work sincerely, do pickup those skills especially disciplined approach, domain expertise etc.

Then why is the apparent bias against them, when it comes to MBA admissions? Read any interview of the Admissions Director/faculty of Bschools, and they all stress on the need for diversity. Now, diversity can be viewed through many lenses(education, gender, experience)-but it is usually boiled down to rejecting male engineers who have worked in ITES. Granted that they make up a large chunk of the applicant pool, but it may be too much of a logical stress to argue that consequentially they think alike, and so should be weaned out.

I must confess to an initial bias that engineers in ITES switching to MBA, were self selecting themselves out of the rat race there, and so 'were not the cream'. This is true for freshers(especially IIT/NITians) where the 'creme de lae' often study abroad or pick up plum jobs post engineering. However, despite that, the ITES guys and IIT/NIT freshers often 'kick ass' the collective derrieres of the others. Is this a reflection of their quality or indictment of the education system is hard to say, but needs some thinking.

Still, I conclude this rant by stating that before passing value judgements on a 'typical' IT guy turned MBA aspirant's CV, we should understand the person's work domain(support/coding/sales..), client work(which sectors), work appraisals(awards, promotions) and quality(say 1yr+). It is difficult because appreciation letters are dime a dozen,something like some army medals/service awards in the USA. But that does not deprive us of the responsibility of taking the time to understand the 80:20 rule to shortlist CVs etc.